There are numerous reasons for experimentation with reproduction of a sonic boom. For example, a sonic boom can be useful for avalanche control. Currently, snow resorts and the like must often cause an avalanche so as to provide a safe environment for skiers. The most common means of producing an avalanche is use of explosives. This practise is very costly and also can be very dangerous for technicians. Furthermore, explosives are not environmentally friendly due to use of chemicals which can be absorbed by the snow, resulting in contamination of water and also chemical fumes are considered a pollutant. Therefore, use of explosives for producing an avalanche is not feasible, due to the dangers involved, high expense, and environmental concerns, etc.
Another very important use for production of a sonic boom is resolve issues associated within the aeronautical field. For example, the sonic boom generated by an aircraft flying at supersonic speeds has proven a major impediment in enhancing air travel. With the de minimus exception of the Concorde, and the briefly proposed Boeing “Sonic Cruiser”, essentially all increases in air speed in civil aviation occurred between 1903 and the introduction in the early 1960's of the Convair 990. For over forty years there has been little increase in the cruising speed of civil airliners and business aircraft.
The sonic boom has undermined much of the economics of supersonic travel. Sonic booms proved damaging and annoying, which resulted in supersonic flight over land areas being banned. With supersonic flight limited to overwater flights, the market for such aircraft was both limited, and aircraft developed for such operations could not be economically redirected to overland use where their supersonic capabilities were of little use.
Eliminating the ill effects of the sonic boom would be facilitated by better understanding of the effects of sonic booms. Some of those effects are perceptual, that is, sonic booms are undesirable over populated areas simply because people do not like them. To better study perceptual issues a real sonic boom reproduction apparatus is necessary.
Within the known prior art there have been only a few concepts for reproduction of a sonic boom. For example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has long recognized the need for sonic boom research and has built one sonic boom Simulator at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The Langley sonic boom Simulator is a person-rated, airtight, loudspeaker driven booth capable of accurately reproducing user-specified sonic boom waveforms at peak sound pressure levels up to approximately 138 dB. Input waveforms are distorted to compensate for non-uniformities in the frequency response characteristics of the booth and sound reproduction system.
The small size and air tight features of the Langley facility underlie some of that facility's limitations. The facility takes a very direct approach in attempting to reproduce the sound of a sonic boom. The chamber is air tight and has rigid walls to support the low frequencies present in a sonic boom to contain the slow pressure rise portion of the boom. However, most people experience a sonic boom under near free field conditions, which a small air tight chamber cannot replicate. NASA viewed sonic boom simulators as having inherently non-uniform frequency responses due to enclosure of the air space. The answer was to use complex computer algorithms to adjust components of the sound spectrum. This has proven to be an extremely costly experimentation facility and the overall end results have not been successfully attained.
Other examples of known prior art include U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,530,424 and 3,442,115, both of which attempt to replicate a sonic boom. However, neither reference has proven to be successful or feasible. Also, each reference can only produce replication of one sonic boom at a time. Whereas, the present invention when activated, produces a “continuous sonic boom” which is most advantageous and heretofore has not been conceived and/or achieved. The actual results of a continuous sonic boom have never been documented and/or studied and the experiments conducted so far by the applicants have proven most informative and unusual results have been discovered.
Therefore, there is a great need for an inexpensive, simplified apparatus for producing a continuous sonic boom that can be feasibly incorporated for various uses. In the case of avalanche control the present invention can be easily transported to the area of choice, is safe for the technicians, it is environmentally friendly, cost effective and controlled in a safe effective manner.
Within the air natal field of art, the present invention has tremendous potential as the apparatus can be used for experimentation to facilitate technicians with aeronautical solutions to allow aircraft to be constructed to actually deflect and/or ricochet a sonic boom in an acceptable direction (such as upward rather than downward) which will overcome the undesirable effects and eliminate the restrictions pertaining to supersonic flight, etc.